Tag Archives: patriarchy

“In this snapshot of our exhibition of North American Muslim women, you’ll find a diverse group of women who’ve been able to move beyond the belittling stereotypes about Muslim women and are, instead, using their personal relationship to their faith in a positive way to actually shift the national conversation about Islam. In the process, they are transforming the world in fresh and exhilarating ways.”

“Second, the criticisms that young female musicians like Rihanna have been receiving about selling their sexualized image to the music industry are almost always whorephobic. It’s paternalistic and antifeminist to condemn what a woman chooses to do with her body, including the choice to engage in sex work (be it stripping or otherwise).”

“This very limited definition of sex prevents people from recognizing lesbian sex as real sex. At best, what lesbians do is foreplay that can never reach completion on its own. Or, it is a turn-on for straight men and a staple of heterosexual pornography. A scene of two women kissing—increasingly common on mainstream television in shows such asGossip Girl and Community—is often used to add titillation to an otherwise mundane plot. As long as the women involved are conventionally pretty and feminine, this lesbianism is safe and sexy for prime-time viewing. (Butch women, by contrast, are often seen as erotic turn-offs: unsexy imitations of real men.) In each of these scenarios, lesbian sex is something women do while they are waiting for a man to come along. The straight male viewer, the target audience for ‘lesbian’ pornography, is invited to imagine himself into the scene, as the one who can complete the picture and turn the warm-up act into the real deal.”

Educated women are a key engine powering “Abenomics,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s plan to revive Japan’s somnolent economy. In speeches this week at the New York Stock Exchange and the United Nations, Abe has spotlighted women as a major source of potential that has not been fully utilized. “If these women rise up,” he said, “I believe Japan can achieve strong growth.”

The call for a culture change that would allow women to “lean in” is long overdue. To be sure, Japan has long prioritized equal access to education for women – with a result that Japanese girls score higher in science than boys and constitute nearly half (48%) of university graduates. Yet only 67% of college-educated women are currently employed, and many of them either languish in low-paid, part-time jobs or are shunted into dead-end “office-lady” roles serving tea for male managers and dusting their desks at the end…

My first question: Why invoke ‘womenandchildren’ when condemning the use of chemical weapons by Assad? Chemical weapons cross a line of human decency – although one might argue that all weapons do so. Calling for the protection of “womenandchildren” allows leaders to frame wars as matters of national security, under the assumption that women and children must be protected for nations to be secure. “

“The idea of your first penis-in-vagina sexual encounter being something significant and life altering (well, for women anyway) has origins in women being considered property.

That is to say, virginity is a social construction that came about because of the commodification of women.

Since women were (and sometimes still are) considered property, when they got married, they were passed on to their husbands from their fathers. You know the whole father-walks-his-daughter-down-the-aisle tradition? Well, it represents a transfer of property from her father to her husband. Her father was literally giving her away.”

“But the truth is, no one is ever owed sex – not when they’re nice, not when they’re domineering, not when they’re manipulative, not when they’re attractive, and definitely not just because they’re a man.

If you really want to wipe out rape culture (the attitude that sex without consent is OK within certain circumstances), you need to understand how male sexual entitlement negatively impacts everyone, men included.”

“Kim Rippere, founder of Secular Woman, explains, ‘The secular community needs to be self-reflective regarding acceptance and inclusion both within our community and in society and the media has to stop ignoring women atheists or it will continue to be difficult for women to emerge as atheist leaders.'”